page_title: History of Polish Americans in Metro Detroit
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: History of Polish Americans in Metro Detroit / History
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Albertus Roman Catholic Church in Detroit MI
context_page_description: As of 2001, the Metro Detroit area had the U.S.'s second largest Polish ethnic concentration after Chicago. As a whole, Michigan has the third-largest percentage of Polish ancestry of any U.S. state.
context_section_description: In the 1880s Polish immigration to Detroit started.
  In 1904 the City of Detroit had 13,000 Polish people. By 1925 the number of Polish people increased to 115,000. In the 1910 count of Detroit's population, the Polish population was not distinguished because Poland was not yet independent. Steve Babson, author of Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town, wrote that "Thus, at least half of the "Germans" counted were probably Poles." After World War I the U.S. government began counting Poles as a separate ethnic group. At that period it was the largest ethnic group in Detroit.
  In 1910 the Dodge Brothers opened an automobile plant in Hamtramck. This caused an increase in Polish immigration. By 1920 about 66% of the Hamtramck's residents were Polish-born. Of the remaining residents, most were ethnic Polish. In 1922 Hamtramck became a municipality, electing a Pole as its first mayor. George Tysh of the Metro Times stated that "In the early days of the auto industry, Hamtramck’s population swelled with Poles, so much so that you were more likely to hear Polish spoken on Joseph Campau than any other tongue." For portions of the 20th Century the Polish community was centered on Hamtramck and Detroit's Poletown.
  A wave of Polish immigrants arrived in the U.S. post-World War II. Poletown in Detroit began losing its Polish population since the 1940s because of construction projects replacing earlier structures and demographic changes. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s a wave of arrivals consisted of refugees, including those who were members of Solidarity, and non-immigrants who had temporary visas. In 1981 the Central Industrial Park (CIP) project destroyed much of Detroit's Poletown.
  By the 21st Century, the Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties formed the center of Michigan's Polish populations. Many Poles had moved from Hamtramck, and Troy became the center of the Polish-American community.
caption: St. Albertus Roman Catholic Church in Detroit
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